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Quick Take
Project 2025 proposes dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Some social media posts misleadingly claim the project calls for closing the National Hurricane Center, a part of NOAA. A Heritage Foundation spokesperson said Project 2025 “does not call for eliminating the NHC,” though climate experts warned that the project’s proposals would hamper the NHC’s operations.
Full Story
More than 180 people have been confirmed dead as of Oct. 2 across six states following the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Helene, stretching from Florida’s Gulf Coast to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, according to CNN.
The National Hurricane Center, which is part of the National Weather Service within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has issued advisories and forecasts about the storm. In the midst of the hurricane, discussions about the future of the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, circulated on social media.
Some social media users misleadingly claimed that Project 2025, a policy agenda aimed at downsizing the federal government, has specifically called for the elimination of the NHC. Project 2025 was created and funded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank, as we’ve written.
“As Hurricane Helene is upgraded to a Category 4, it might be a good time to remind you Project 2025 intends to close the National Hurricane Center,” posts on Threads and Instagram claimed on Sept. 26.
Project 2025 provides a blueprint for “the next conservative President” on federal operations, the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs, and energy policy, particularly regarding climate change.
Former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025. “I’m not going to read it,” Trump said during his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He also claimed to be unaware of who was behind the initiative, though portions of the plan were developed by advisers who served during Trump’s first term.
Trump has not publicly called for eliminating or dismantling the National Hurricane Center. But when he was president, he did propose deep cuts to NOAA, including smaller cuts to the National Weather Service.
Project 2025 talks about NOAA in its policy agenda published online, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” It proposes plans for the agency under the chapter “Department of Commerce,” written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration of the Department of Commerce during the Trump administration.
The project proposes that NOAA be “dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”
However, Heritage Foundation spokesperson Ellen Keenan told us in an email, “Project 2025 does not call for eliminating the NHC or the NOAA. Those claims are false.”
Here’s what Project 2025 writes about the NHC:
Project 2025: The National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service data centers provide important public safety and business functions as well as academic functions, and are used by forecasting agencies and scientists internationally. Data continuity is an important issue in climate science. Data collected by the department should be presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.
Project 2025 calls NOAA “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” It criticized the administration’s efforts to predict and manage major weather events as “the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”
The project argues that the “current organization corrupts its useful functions” and suggests that “it should be broken up and downsized.”
Experts Warn of Impact on NHC
Climate experts are questioning the motivations behind Project 2025’s proposal for the NOAA and the impact it would have on the National Hurricane Center.
“There are lots of ways they go after an agency without calling for its immediate elimination, and I think they are hiding behind the fact that they haven’t explicitly called for elimination,” Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told us. “But they’re calling for the kind of destructive actions that would seriously hobble the agency’s ability to do its job,” she said.
NOAA’s ability to predict major storms like Hurricane Helene depends on its various offices working together to provide real-time weather data as well as long-term climate trend data. “These different offices are working together very closely to provide … both short-term as well as long-range information to help inform weather and climate predictions,” Cleetus added. “So the idea that you would dismantle it and it would still continue to be able to provide the service, that’s just not accurate.”
Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, also told us the language in Project 2025 makes it “clear that NHC would be axed, at least in its current form. … It would create all sorts of confusion, uncertainty, disruption, etc. and the idea that the NHC could continue to fulfill its mission is absurd.”
“Without NOAA and the critical data [they] collect and maintain, NHC will be unable to operate in any useful capacity,” Mann said.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Cleetus, Rachel. Policy director, Climate and Energy program, Union of Concerned Scientists. Phone interview with FactCheck.org. 1 Oct 2024.
Contorno, Steve. “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found at least 140 people who worked for him are involved.” 11 Jul 2024.
Hoffman, Riley. “Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript.” ABC News. 10 Sep 2024.
Keenan, Ellen. Senior communications manager, Special Initiatives. Heritage Foundation. Email to FactCheck.org. 30 Sep 2024.
Kiely, Eugene, D’Angelo Gore and Robert Farley. “A Guide to Project 2025.” FactCheck.org. 10 Sep 2024.
Mann Michael. Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media, Department of Earth & Environmental Science/Annenberg School for Communication. University of Pennsylvania. Emails to FactCheck.org. 30 Sep 2024.
Mufson, Steven, Jason Samenow and Brady Dennis. “White House proposes steep budget cuts leading climate science agency.” Washington Post. 3 Mar 2017.
Project 2025. “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” Accessed 30 Sep 2024.
U.S. Department of Commerce. National Hurricane Center. Accessed 1 Oct 2024.
Wolfe, Elizabeth, et al. “Relief efforts continue after Hurricane Helene kills at least 180.” CNN. 2 Oct 2024.